Cloud Cult's 'Love' Channels A Life Tested By Loss

The latest Morning Edition "Music Moment" focuses on the band Cloud Cult. The group is known to fans for making music to soothe the soul, as it does on the new album Love.

"This album really looks at all the different aspects of the self that need to be healed up in order to facilitate the process of stepping aside and allowing love to speak for our life rather than our wounds," lead singer Craig Minowa says.

The songs Minowa writes for his band can have the feel and hushed tones of a lullaby, and the emotion comes from a tragedy that's all too real. One night back in 2002, Minowa and his wife put their 2-year-old son, Kaidin, to bed. Their beloved boy did not wake up.

Doctors could not explain why Kaidin died in his sleep, leaving Minowa to channel all that sadness and uncertainty into his work.

"It was quite a few years and quite a few albums of inner pain and using the music for medicine to try and, step by step, gradually pull ourselves out of hell," Minowa says.

Healing came to mean not letting emotions like anger or fear linger — an idea at the core of Love. But even now, more than a decade after his son's death, you can hear that loss from years ago in Minowa's voice. He says he finds solace now in meditating on both mysticism and science. To that point, he has his own take on the first law of thermodynamics.

"Basically, what it says is that energy cannot be destroyed; it can only be transformed," Minowa says. "So any kind of energy that you put out there never goes away. Everything that we did together, every moment that we had together, everything that he felt and everything that I felt for him still resonates out there in the universe. And I refuse to believe anything less than the idea that I'll somehow be with my son again."

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Transcript

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU'RE THE ONLY THING IN YOUR WAY")

CLOUD CULT: (Singing) Drive, baby, drive until your trouble's gone.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

We're listening now to a song from Cloud Cult. It's a band that lives up to the Cloud in its name, known to fans for making music to soothe the soul, like their new album titled "Love."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU'RE THE ONLY THING IN YOUR WAY")

CULT: (Singing) You are the wind, the flood and the flame nothing here can get in your way. You've come too far to care what they say. Now you're the only thing in your way...

CRAIG MINOWA: This album really looks at all the different aspects of the self that need to be healed up, in order to facilitate the process of stepping aside and allowing love to speak for our life, rather than our wounds.

MONTAGNE: Craig Minowa is lead singer for Cloud Cult and a man who knows what it means to be wounded. The songs he writes for his band, like this one, can have the feel and hushed tones of a lullaby. The emotion comes from a tragedy that's all too real.

One night back in 2002, Craig Minowa and his wife put their two year-old son Kaidin for bed. Their beloved boy did not wake up. Doctors could not explain why Kaidin died in his sleep, leaving Minowa to channel all that sadness and uncertainty into his work.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MINOWA: It was quite a few years and quite a few albums of inner pain and using the music for medicine to try and step by step gradually pull ourselves out of hell.

MONTAGNE: Healing came to mean not letting emotions like anger or fear linger, an idea at the core of Cloud Cult's new album.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "1X1X1")

CULT: (Singing) You are here to take the punches one by one. You're here to learn your lessons one by one. You're here to peel the layers off one by one by one by one by one by one...

MONTAGNE: Even now more than a decade after his son's death, you can hear that loss from years ago.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SHOW STARTS NOW")

CULT: (Singing) The physicist and the mystic say there's no such thing as time. If God is now and everywhere why's it so hard to find? I want to be the...

MONTAGNE: Craig Minowa says he finds solace now in meditating on both mysticism and science. And he has his own take on the First Law of Thermodynamics.

MINOWA: Basically, what it says is that energy cannot be destroyed. It can only be transformed, so any kind of energy that you put out there never goes away. Everything that we did together, every moment that we had together, everything that he felt, and everything that I felt for him still resonates out there in the universe. And I refuse to believe anything less than the idea that I'll somehow be with my son again.

MONTAGNE: That's Craig Minowa of Cloud Cult. The band's new album is out this week and you can hear it at nprmusic.org. It's called "Love."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SHOW STARTS NOW")

CULT: (Singing) Hold your breath for a better day and you'll never learn how to breathe. You're afraid of the dark but that's where you learn to see...